I imagine they're not talking about changing the drift velocity, but the rate of information propagation through the EM wave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spee

I imagine they're not talking about changing the drift velocity, but the rate of information propagation through the EM wave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_electricity versus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_velocity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_velocity I don't know if increasing the speed of electricity has real implications for small circuits; I guess it could make a nearly factor of 2 difference for long copper wires, but we use fiber for long connections anyway, and speed of light in glass is higher than speed of electricity in copper.